Three main guides help reveal the significance of a text in Scripture: the writer of the text, the document itself, and the original audience for whom the text was written. In order for us to interpret the Bible responsibly, it’s very important for us to understand that each of the guides we’ve mentioned informs and is informed by the others.

Our knowledge of the author helps us understand his document and original audience. The document’s words and grammar give us information about the writer and the audience. The things we know about the audience help us understand the writer’s intentions and the nuances of his document. So, as interpreters, we need to gain as much guidance as possible from all these sources, so that our readings of Scripture aren’t skewed by an imbalanced emphasis on just one or two of them.

If we overemphasize the author, we often fall into an “intentional fallacy.” An intentional fallacy relies too heavily on what we think we know about a writer and his intentions and de-emphasizes the things we learn about the document and audience.

Let’s illustrate some possible intentional fallacies by looking at John 3:16. We can be sure that when John wrote this verse, he intended to draw his readers’ attention to the love of God shown in the death of Christ. But we can’t be sure of all the subtle, psychological influences that motivated John to write these words. Scripture and reliable history simply don’t give us enough clues about John’s inner thoughts to draw these types of conclusions. And even if we could, his inner thoughts might not be particularly relevant to the meaning of John 3:16.

A second type of mistake we can make is overemphasizing the document. This kind of error is often called a “graphic fallacy.” The term “graphic” comes from the Greek word graphē, which means “writing.” Correspondingly, the graphic fallacy overemphasizes the document itself, to the relative exclusion of contextual considerations like the writer and audience.

In our example from John 3:16, think about what could happen if we focused exclusively on the document and ignored John and his original audience. How would we know who God’s Son was? After all, this verse doesn’t explicitly identify him. If readers didn’t know that John was a Christian and that he wrote to a Christian audience, they might make all sorts of irresponsible assumptions.

A pagan worshiper of the Canaanite gods might think that the “son of God” was Baal, the son of the Canaanite god El. Someone familiar with the fact that Adam is called the “son of God” in Luke 3:38 might wrongly conclude that Adam is the Son of God in John 3:16, or even that Adam and Jesus are the same person. There are many mistakes we can make when we ignore the writer and the audience.

A third type of interpretive mistake we can make is overemphasizing the audience. This is often called an “affective fallacy” because it focuses too heavily on how Scripture affects its audience. This fallacy is often committed when an interpreter speculates too much about the mindset of the original audience and fails to pay enough attention to the writer and the document.

For example, in John 3:16, the affective fallacy might speculate too much about the original audience’s circumstances and response to John’s teaching about eternal life. It might suggest that when John talked about life, what he really meant was earthly escape from the persecution his original audience was enduring and not a spiritual renewal and blessing that we enjoy forever. This interpretation would overemphasize the passage’s impact on its audience, ignoring John’s broader teaching and the details of the document itself.

Sadly, mistakes like the intentional fallacy, the graphic fallacy and the affective fallacy are easy to make — especially when we don’t have very much information about some of the guides. Even so, when we properly account for the interdependence of the guidance we receive from the writer, the document and the audience, everything we learn from any of these guides has the potential to improve our interpretations.